The Dream Hunters

CHAPTER SIX

At first it seemed to the monk that the inside of the lacquer box was a familiar place that he had somehow forgotten — perhaps his room as a boy, or a secret room in the temple that had remained hidden until this moment.

There was nothing in the room but a mirror in one corner. From the mirror came a gentle glow, as of sunlight in the final moments of the day.

The monk picked up the mirror.

On the back of the mirror was a painting. It showed two men: one was a fierce, proud man with hunted eyes and a grey beard. The other figure was clearly intended to be the monk himself, although it was covered with stains and mould.

He turned the mirror over, and looked into its face.

He saw a green–eyed girl who seemed almost as if she was painted out of light. When she observed him looking at her, her face fell.

«Why did you come here?» she whispered, sadly. «I gave my life for you.»

«You were asleep at the threshold of the door," he told her. «I could not wake you.»

She tossed her head. «I hunted the Baku," she told him. «I went to the place where the Baku go, and went with them as they ate dreams, and I entered your dreams as you dreamed them. I was there with you when your father gave you the chest, and as you woke I kept the chest, and when your grandfather gave you the key, I took it from you as you woke.

«Through all the next day I followed you, and when night came I lay down at your door, in the place that the dream would have to come on its way to you, and I slept. I saw the dream slipping through the darkness, and I sprang upon it, and made it my own. And in my dream I opened the chest with a key, and it opened, huge as the sky, and I had no choice but to enter.

«And then I was very afraid, for I was lost in this box, and I could not find my way out again. I had lost the path that would take me back to my body. I was sad and scared, but also I was proud, for I knew that I had saved your life.»

«Why would you do this for me?» asked the monk, although he knew already that he understood why she had done it.

The fox spirit girl smiled. «Why did you search me out?» she asked. «Why did you come here?»

«Because I care for you," he said.

She lowered her eyes. «Then — now you have come here, and now you have

learned the truth — you must know that it is time for you to leave. I have saved your life. The onmyoji who is your enemy will die in your place, and you can return to your temple, grow your pumpkins and your silly dry yams, and, when it is appropriate, say a prayer for me.»

«I have come to free you," said the monk. «It is my task.»

«And how would you free me?» asked the girl, sadly. «Can you break the metal of the mirror?»

«No.» said the monk. «I can not.» And he pronounced the name that had been written on the slip of paper that Binzuru Harada had given him on the bridge. Standing beside him was the King of Dreams.

Well, said the king, are you ready to leave this place?

«My lord," said the monk. «I am a monk. I own nothing but my begging bowl. But the dream that fox dreamed was my dream by rights. I ask for it to be returned to me.»

But, said the king, if I return your dream to you, you must die in her place.

«I understand that," said the monk. «But it is my dream. And I will not have this fox die in my place.»

The King of Dreams nodded. His face did not change, but it seemed to the monk that he was saddened by this, but that he was also pleased, and the young monk knew that his request had been the correct one.

The king gestured, and the mirror lay empty on the floor, while the fox spirit stood beside the monk in the dark.

You have done the right thing, at some cost to yourself, said the king to the monk. So I shall, in my turn, do something for you. You may have a little time to say farewell to the fox.

The fox spirit threw herself to the floor at the king's feet. «But you swore to help me!» she said, angrily.

And I helped you.

«It is not fair," said the fox.

No, agreed the king. It is not.

And, calmly and imperceptibly, he left the two of them alone in that place.

That is all the talc tells us of this moment: that he left them alone to bid each other farewell. Perhaps they said formal farewells, awkwardly, the space between them — between a man who had forsaken the world and a fox spirit — a gulf that could not be crossed. It is certainly possible.

But one remembers all they had done, one for the other, and one might conjecture that, at this time, they made love. Or that they dreamed that they did.

Perhaps.

When they were done with all their farewells, the King of Dreams rejoined them.

Now all will be as it should be, he said, and the monk found himself staring out from the mirror at the fox.

«I would have given my life for you," she whispered, sadly.

«Live," said the monk.

«You shall be revenged," said the fox. «The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox.»

The monk looked at the fox–girl from the mirror. «Seek not revenge, but the Buddha," he said to her. Then he turned, and walked into the heart of the mirror, and he was gone.

The fox sat in the wilderness of rocks beside the huge black fox of dreams.

«All that I did," she said, «everything I tried to do. All for nothing.»

Nothing is done entirely for nothing, said the fox of dreams. Nothing is wasted. You are older, and you have made decisions, and you are not the fox you were yesterday. Take what you have learned, and move on.

«Where is he now?» she asked.

His body is on his sleeping mat in the temple. His spirit will go where it is meant to go.

«So he will die," she said.

Yes, he said.

«He told me not to seek revenge, but to seek the Buddha," said the fox spirit, sadly.

Wise counsel, said the fox of dreams. Vengeance can be a road that has no ending. You would be wise to avoid it. And…?

«I shall seek the Buddha," said the fox, with a toss of her head. «But first I shall seek revenge.»

As you will, said the fox of dreams, and the fox could not tell if he was happy or sad, satisfied or dissatisfied.

And with a switch of his tail he bounded away across the landscape of dreams, and left the little fox more alone than she had ever been.

She woke in the little temple on the side of the mountain, beside the body of the monk. His eyes were closed, and his breath was shallow, and his skin was the colour of sea–foam.

It hurt, having already said goodbye to him, to have him still there. But she stayed with him, and attended to his body.

He died, peacefully, on the following day.

There was a funeral for him, in the little temple, and he was buried on the mountainside, beside the other monks who had tended the little temple in the centuries that had gone before.

The full of the moon came and went, and the waning moon rode high in the sky, and the Master of Yin–Yang was still alive. And more than that, he could feel his fear dying within him.

He took the lacquer box, the black key, and the little porcelain plates, and he wrapped them up in the square of silk (which showed only his face now, for of the other painted figure there was nothing more than the shadow of a stain) and, at the dead of night, he buried them beneath the roots of a tree that had long ago been struck by lightning and was twisted into a most disturbing shape.

He was relieved that he was alive. He was happier than he had ever been. Those were good days for the onmyoji.

The moon was again full in the sky when he was visited by a maiden of high birth, who wished to consult him about propitious days. A mist hung heavy in the air that day, and it twined its tendrils through the onmyoji's house.

She paid for his wisdom with gold coins so old they were almost featureless, and with rice of the finest quality. Then she left his house, in a magnificent ox–drawn carriage.

The Master of Yin–Yang told a servant to follow her on horseback, and to discover who the maiden was, and where she lived.

Several hours later, the servant returned. He said that the maiden lived in an old but impressive house, several ri north of Kyoto, and described the area to the onmyoji.

Days passed. The onmyoji could not get the maiden's face out of his mind, nor the way she walked, respectful and seductive at the same time. He imagined possessing her, touching her, owning her.

When he closed his eyes at night the maiden was there: her hair, so long, and so very black; her eyes, the shade of green leaves uncurling in the spring sun light. her feet, which moved like tiny mice; the delicacy of her hand upon her fan; her voice, like a song heard in a dream.

When he went to make love to his concubine, he found she did not interest him, and he returned to his room, where he wrote a poem comparing his feel ings about the maiden to the autumn wind, stirring the surface of a pool that had, until now, been placid, and he gave it to the servant to take to the maiden.

The servant brought back her reply, a poem in which she spoke of the reflec tion of the moon in the pool stirred by the wind. I lis heart swelled within him when he read it, astonished by the grace and ease of her brushwork.

He asked his oracles about her. The old woman laughed at him. cackling so hard he thought that she would die, and said nothing. The young woman with the cold hands said, «The man she loved is dead.»

«Good," said the onmyoji. «When is the most propitious day to visit her?»

But at that the three women all giggled and laughed as if they were mocking him, and angrily he left their house.

On the following evening he arrived at the maiden's house. He begged her pardon for his arrival, claiming that he was forced, by knowledge gained from his divinations, to leave his house travelling to the north, which was an auspi cious direction, and that he needed to stay overnight in the north before leaving in the morning for the city.

She invited him to dine with her.

The house was magnificent. He and the maiden dined alone, and through the evening her servants brought them the finest foods he had ever eaten.

«I have never tasted anything this fine!» he said, nibbling some exotic meat in a cold sauce.

«And to think," she said, «if I had not been here, you might have been forced to sit in the tumbledown ruins of an old and empty house, and to dine upon mice and spiders.»

At the end of the meal, he made it clear that he would like to enjoy her physi cal favours. She poured them both sake, and told him that it was quite out of the question.

«For why would I wish to be second in your affections?» she asked. «You have a wife. You have a concubine. What would I be?»

«I will be yours, and yours alone," he told her.

«You say that," she said, «but after you have made love to me then your wife and your concubine will seem more attractive, and I will be left alone here. I do not think you should stay the night here. Your carriage will take you to another house for the night. If ever you are free to love me, and me alone, then come back.»

«It is as good as done!» he said.

«But I can never be yours," she told him, «while you have your house. For I should want you to come and live in my house, with me. Indeed, my house would be yours, and would be yours forever. But if you had a house, you might sigh after it, and one day you would leave me for your own house.» She shifted then, minutely, and the onmyoji imagined he caught the briefest glimpse of the white swell of her breast within her robe.

«I shall take care of my house," said the onmyoji, his mind a single burning flame of lust.

«And there is one more thing," said the maiden, her green eyes burning into his. «And that is your magic. How can I be your love, and your wife, if I knew that you commanded Tengu and Oni, and that in your scrolls you had the knowledge to change me into a bird if I displeased you?»

She bent over to pour him more sake, which caused her robe to fall open a little more, and the onmyoji saw a white breast, tipped by a nipple as pink as the sunset. At this, the onmyoji leapt to grab hold of her but the maiden deftly moved back, avoiding his grasp as if she had barely noticed it, and she bade him goodnight.

When he realised that their time together was over he sighed so loudly it seemed that the hinges of the world were groaning. There was a madness that came on him then, or so they said.

On the following night there were two fires in the city of Kyoto. The first house to burn was that of the onmyoji, the seventeenth–finest house in all the city. He was not suspected of any involvement, having left the house, earlier that day, in a cart loaded high with all his scrolls and his implements of magic. It was a tragic fire, for his wife and his concubine and all his servants were asleep inside the house as it blazed, and it took their lives.

The other house to burn was a hovel on the outskirts of the city, in a neigh borhood of ill–repute. It was a house where three women lived, who were said to have been fortunetellers and herbalists. No one knows if they were in the house when it burned, for the only remains that were found in the ashes were the bones and skulls of babes and of small children.

It was evening when the Master of Yin–Yang arrived at the house of the maiden who had won his heart.

«My house is burned," he said, «and my women are dead. I have no one to love but you and nowhere to be but here.»

She smiled at him then, a smile of such happiness that it seemed to him that the sun had come out and shone on him alone.

«And in this cart," he told her, «I have my knowledge. All my scrolls, all my magical implements. All the amulets and wands and names that give me power over the spirits and demons, that allow me to tell the future. All of it, I have brought here to lay at your feet.»

The maiden nodded, and several of her servants took the cart, and unpacked its contents, and took the things he had brought away.

«There," said the onmyoji, «now, I am yours, and there is nothing that can come between us.»

«There is still something between us," she told him. «Your robe. Take it off. Let me see you as you are.»

The madness and the lust mingled in the onmyoji's veins. He stepped out of his robe and stood there, naked, in the misty twilight. She picked up his robe, and held it.

He opened his arms wide to embrace the maiden.

The maiden stepped closer to him. «Now," she whispered. «You have no house, no wife, no concubine, no magic, no clothing. You have lost it all. And so it is time that I gave something to you.»

She reached up her hands to his head, and pulled it close to her lips, as if she were about to kiss him, just above one eye.

«But you shall keep your life," she said, «for he would not have wanted me to kill you.»

A fox's teeth arc very sharp.

And with a flick of her tail, she was gone.

The Master of Yin–Yang was found the next morning in the grounds of a house that had been abandoned twenty years earlier, when the official whose family had owned it was disgraced. Some said it was guilt that had brought him there, for, fifteen years earlier, the onmyoji had been in the service of the lord who had caused the downfall of that family.

He was naked, and ashamed, and quite mad.

Some said it was the loss of his wife and his house in a fire that had driven him to madness. Others claimed it was the loss of his eye, while the supersti tious, speaking among themselves, claimed that it was fox magic.

His old associates avoided him in the days that were to come, when they saw him begging in the streets, with only rags to cover his nakedness, only a rag about his head to hide the ruins of his face.

He lived in misery and squalor and madness until he died, with no happiness to be found anywhere in his life, save the momentary happiness of dreams.

But of how he lived, beyond this point, and of how he died, all the tales are silent.

«But what good did it do?» asked the raven.

Good? asked the King of All Night's Dreaming.

«Yes," said the raven. «The monk was to die, and he died. The fox who tried to help him failed to help him. The onmyoji lost everything. What good did it do, your granting her wish?»

The king stared away at the horizon. In his eye a single star glinted and was gone.

Lessons were learned, said the pale king. Events occurred as it was proper for them to do. I do not perceive that my attention was wasted.

«Lessons were learned?» said the raven, bristling its neck feathers, and raising its black head high. «By whom?»

By all of them. Particularly the monk.

The raven croaked once in the back of its throat, and hopped from one foot to the other. It appeared to be hunting for words. The king watched it patiently with dark eyes. «But he is dead," said the raven, after some time.

Come to that, so are you, my raven, but there were lessons in here for you as well.

«And did you also learn a lesson?» asked the raven, who had once been a poet.

But the pale king chose not to answer and remained wrapped in silence, staring at the horizon; and after some time the raven flapped heavily away into the sky of dreams, and left the king entirely alone.

And that is the tale of the fox and the monk.

Or almost all of it. For it has been said that those who dream of the distant regions where the Baku graze have sometimes seen two figures, walking in the distance, and that these two figures were a monk and a fox, or it might be, a woman and a man.

Others say no, and that even in dreams and in death a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay.

But dreams are strange things, and none of us but the King of All Night's Dreaming can say if they are true or not, nor of what they are able to tell any of us about the times that are still to come.